Secondary menu

You are here

Blogs

I'm going to nominate Cris Carter for that honor. I'm frankly shocked that this New York Times article references his ownership of Carter Bros., however. It's rare that the sports section acknowledges a player's post-playing career.
Of course, this -
He owns a security company, Carter Brothers, based in Atlanta, and received an award for entrepreneurship from the National Urban League.
- makes it seem like he's running a little old alarm company, or something. But, as you'll see in this story about Carter Bros. buying GE's Edwards installation arm, where I interviewed the other Carter brother, John, it's pretty dang substantial.
I'm thinking for mainstream fame combined with security industry stature, Carter can't be beat. A close runner up might be Thomas McMillen, the former NBA star and congressman who heads Homeland Security Capital Corp., but a: his company is still smaller than Carter's, and b: Carter is on HBO.

One thing about these hedge fund guys: They certainly know how to lively up an investor call. Yeah, it's still kind of like a math class, but this is one math class with some interesting personalities. The CEO of Brink's is like the teacher and those hedge fund guys are the kids who don't care if they get detention.
Ready to tune in yet? Mark your calendar for one of the least boring investment calls of the year: Jan. 31, 11 a.m. Eastern Time.

Okay, so this happened in China, where maybe privacy isn't as closely held by government employees, but having surveillance footage of people kissing on a subway platform show up on YouTube has got to be the worst possible PR for those pushing cameras as a way of reducing crime.
Here's the video. Sorry, couldn't resist.
If this happened in the U.S., I'm pretty sure Nancy Grape's head would explode.
It would be wise, in general, for security professionals of all stripes to acquaint themselves with privacy laws and best practices. If you can advise your customers in this area, you might find yourself with another piece of RMR, acting as an outsourced chief privacy officer.
If you're looking to start down the path of privacy, you can't do better than the IAPP. And, hey, they're in Maine, so they must be smart.

I can't seem to get away from this false alarm topic lately. Here's a video
from a Florida TV station reporting on a non-profit organization that has racked up over $2,000 in false alarm fees in the last year. The non-profit says that a fire sensor installed in the kitchen went off every time the stove was turned on and the situation got so ridiculous they had to set up a makeshift stove outside so they could cook.
The most interesting part of the piece, however, was a comment that the fire department must respond to all alarms, even cancelled alarms, from residential centers like this one. That was news to me. I guess I understand the intention of this policy, but it really eliminates the effectiveness of verification as a way to reduce false alarms, huh? I wonder if anybody's keeping track of how many false alarms are the result of policies like this? Sounds like wasted efforts to me.

For whatever reason, there's a management shake-up going on at Cisco. The past couple of days have seen press releases come across my desk reporting the new positions of two former higher-up physical security execs:
Hirsch Electronics today announced Robert Beliles, co-founder of Cisco's physical security initiative and business unit, has been appointed vice president, enterprise business development.Ã‚Â Mr. Beliles brings to Hirsch more than eleven years of product marketing and product management experience with Cisco Systems, Inc. He is also the co-authorÃ‚Â ofÃ‚Â several networked physical security system patents-pending.
I like the "Mr. Beliles." The PR agency apparently used to work for the New York Times.
Then there's this:
Agent Vi, developers of enterprise video analytics software to improve security, business intelligence and operations, today announced the appointment of Mark Kolar to the newly created position of vice president, channels for the Americas. He will build, lead and direct the companyÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s channel partner efforts and related programs in North, Central and South America.
Kolar joins Agent Vi from Cisco Systems where he served as director of physical security for worldwide channels. While at Cisco, Kolar founded and initially developed CiscoÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s physical security go-to-market and acquisition strategies, and most recently designed, launched, and enhanced CiscoÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s worldwide physical security reseller and channel program. His efforts included the implementation of processes to control and scale the deployment of Cisco's physical security solutions as well as the management of several large systems integrator relationships.
Considering Cisco's only been in the physical security marketplace for a couple years, that would seem to be a large loss of institutional memory, but I guess Bill Stuntz has plenty of that himself.

Devcon International has a new chief financial officer, Mark M. McIntosh, who most recently served as the company's vice president of finance and strategic business development. He is replacing Robert W. Schiller who resigned on Jan. 16. Here's the official press release.

There are puns to be had and bad jokes galore here, but I'm going to maintain decorum in telling you that IP access manufacturer Edge Integration Systems is now Reach Systems.
The press release tells us:
Edge chose to rename the company and flagship product, the Edge Access Control System (Edge ACS), to further differentiate our unique service-based access control solution from other legacy security products using the word Ã¢â‚¬Å“EdgeÃ¢â‚¬Â in their name. Many of these similarly named products belong to our valued partners like respected card reader manufacturer, HID Global.
Not to cast aspersions, but I'm guessing HID Global was maybe respectfully involved in getting that name change accomplished. They've been working hard to establish their Edge line of IP access products, and probably weren't too keen on confusion with a start-up.
Reach, nee Edge, makes a good product, allowing tons of web-based control of access systems, offering a great solution for multi-site businesses that aren't huge, for example, or for integrators to offer managed access control to SMB customers. I had a good interview with Dennis Raefield about it here.

I saw this police-penned story come across the wire. It's actually a nice tale of police and the alarm industry working together to do what both are supposed to do: stop crime and keep people and property safe.
I just find this part interesting:
One idea centered on Ã¢â‚¬Å“Eliminating the number of steps with the alarm,Ã¢â‚¬Â that caused a Hayward Baker representative being notified before the SPPD that the alarm had been activated.
Due to the number of thefts at the company the SPPD and Hayward Baker decided to Ã¢â‚¬Å“Have the security company call us directly so we could catch the guys there on the property,Ã¢â‚¬Â said Chief MacKinnon.
When the January 12 report of the alarm was received by the SPPD the Officers Ã¢â‚¬Å“went down and skippedÃ¢â‚¬Â the normal security measures of checking doors and windows to see if the business had been broken into.
Ignoring the weird capitalization and distaste for commas, what's strange here is we have a police department touting its "proactive policing," when, in fact, they wouldn't have caught anybody doing anything if it weren't for the alarm company, whose name for some reason can't be mentioned. They don't have any problem naming the establishment that's protected, Hayward Baker, but can't seem to remember which alarm firm it was that was so compliant in changing protocol to suit the police department's needs. Huh.
Over on Leischen's blog, there's discussion of alarm companies using free labor. Well, how many criminals are the cops catching if no one calls them up to tell them where they are?

The break-up last spring of Tyco International has yielded better than expected results, according to a preliminary financial resultss for the first quarter of fiscal 2008. Led by strong quarterly performance by ADT and Tyco's Flow Control unit, Tyco's revenue grew 12 percent, from $4,365,000,000 in Q1 2007 to $4,870,000,000 in Q1 2008.
The company reported organic revenue growth of six percent, and a 55 percent increase in operating income. Tyco chief Ed Breen said in a statement that Tyco's "raising its full-year earnings-per-share guidance.
This morning Rueters reported: Tyco shares were up $2.03 or 6 percent to $35.75 on the New York Stock Exchange, erasing all of their losses from the three prior trading sessions.
The stock is still down about 11 percent since the end of 2007, about in line with the year-to-date losses in the Standard & Poor's 500 index.
Tyco's investor conference call is scheduled for Super Tuesday, now called Tsunami Tuesday, Feb. 5.

There are puns to be had and bad jokes galore here, but I'm going to maintain decorum in telling you that IP access manufacturer Edge Integration Systems is now Reach Systems.
The press release tells us:
Edge chose to rename the company and flagship product, the Edge Access Control System (Edge ACS), to further differentiate our unique service-based access control solution from other legacy security products using the word Ã¢â‚¬Å“EdgeÃ¢â‚¬Â in their name. Many of these similarly named products belong to our valued partners like respected card reader manufacturer, HID Global.
Not to cast aspersions, but I'm guessing HID Global was maybe respectfully involved in getting that name change accomplished. They've been working hard to establish their Edge line of IP access products, and probably weren't too keen on confusion with a start-up.
Reach, nee Edge, makes a good product, allowing tons of web-based control of access systems, offering a great solution for multi-site businesses that aren't huge, for example, or for integrators to offer managed access control to SMB customers. I had a good interview with Dennis Raefield about it here.